Turn our eyes away
by VervainAndRoses
Summary: "You say Scotland only has you…I though it had me as well." Set after the end of 1x17, a follow-up to Mary&Francis' conversation.


His thoughts run away from him as she blows the candle out, leaving them sunk into darkness. Without the flame to illuminate them he can just make out her profile beside him, and how she tries to settle to sleep, her hands moving about to find a comfortable position, smoothing the covers down and clasping and unclasping, restless. He can't help but look at the silhouette of those hands in the faint moonlight allowed by their windows, those lovely smooth hands that he's kissed and he's hold and he's kept locked beside her head as he drove into her while they made love and she gasped out his name against his shoulder. How they caressed his face mere minutes ago and slid down his chest, not an apology but a slight, uneasy comfort. And he can't help thinking about the letters those hands wrote today, letters that had the power to make his country come tumbling down.

He is not angry with her; in fact, he doesn't feel anger at all. But his thoughts continue to circle her actions the past days. How beautiful she looked as those men kneeled to her and set their lives at her feet, something he did in is heart the very day he realized that he loved her and that to stay sane they needed to be together, and how deadly and driven she was with his mother, unrelenting. He kept finding new facets of his wife and it only made him love her more. But he knows now she wasn't bluffing when she said she sent out those riders, and somehow that changes everything. Had his mother not given into her demands, as rightful as they were...he doesn't even want to think of what would have happened. Where they would be now.

They cornered her and she acted, and he can no less respect her for it as he would for anybody, but she is his wife and he didn't know what she was planning at all, and maybe that is what troubles him so, what doesn't let him rest. Beside him, her eyes have fallen close, and he doesn't want to lose this moment to speak to her, so he pushes the words out of his chest. He owes their marriage the honesty.

"You said Scotland only had you… well I though it had me as well." He doesn't mean to sound affronted but it's as simple as that. He thought they were together in this, it seems he was mistaken. He can make out her eyes opening, but she doesn't look at him.

"I couldn't have asked for your help in this, your loyalty is to France." She says simply, and he wonders if she truly thinks he would have left her alone, when he had supported every step of the way so far.

"And with you and Scotland as well." He answers her, "We are _married_." He strains the word. He is her husband, her King Consort, as she well enough put it to his mother, just as she is his Consort here. And he would take her advice whenever necessary; he would listen to her, believing that she had both of their best interests at heart. That she would do the same if need be. They could have found a better way, together.

"We are married, yes. And you are still the future King of France." She says then almost sadly, turning to look at him. He can feel her eyes on him even if he can't see her properly in the dark. "I had no choice." She says quietly, after a moment. But she did have a choice, he thinks bitterly, she could have chosen to trust him.

"I know, that the circumstances were dire but-"

"Dire?" She interrupts him, "Your family, and mine as well, betrayed me. Don't resent me for doing what was necessary to secure-"

"I'm your family too." He says and it stops her cold. "And I don't resent you for it Mary, I understand why you would-…but I'm your husband." He hopes she might understand just from that one word. They've always honored their marriage, they refused to become what was expected, a political alliance of strangers who cared very little for each other. But today she made a monumental decision without so much as asking what he thought and it's not that he wants her to submit to him, he so loves her fire and the way she matches him in every sense, but that decision affected his country and his life and it was like an afterthought to inform him. Her actions make it seem as if she didn't care for him, which he knows isn't true.

"What are you saying?" She asks him, even more quietly, and he wishes it wasn't so dark he can't read her emotions of her face like he knows how. After much teasing from him when they were younger she learned how to control her voice and knows she's doing it know, hiding her feelings from him. Then again he also thinks this conversation wasn't one they could have in daylight for some reason.

"It's just…" He tries to search for the words to explain what troubles him.

_If my country was in peril I would never choose to destroy yours_, perhaps, and as he thinks that he knows it is true. Even if somehow their roles were reversed and the best decision for France would be to see Scotland fall, he believes he could never bring himself to do it. Even if that was the choice of a King… he wouldn't, couldn't, hurt her like that. And he now knew that Mary would without blinking twice. It stung.

_I thought we would stand by each other, _he could say, because she made this decision with no thought of him, with no thought of even telling him at all. Even as it concerned her husband most of all. She waved his involvement away with a half offer to rule beside her in Scotland and no mind to what would happen to his homeland, the country he loved and had been groomed to rule since childhood, or his brothers, the little boys that worshiped her and would be displaced and sent somewhere occult, never safe.

He wants to say those things, to call her out_. _But then he remembers her tears over her countrymen, what she had to go through that day, and at the hands of his mother no less. He remembers her pain, as if he could ever forget it for it was his as well, the sobs that racked her frame and the way she fell against him in her grief… and so he keeps quiet. He doesn't say anything at all.

"… nothing. Forget I said it, sleep." He says, swallowing down that feeling he still can't quite place. That faint sense of betrayal tinged with understanding and an unease that he wants to believe it's not what makes him turn around in bed. He searches for a more comfortable position on his side, his back to her, and after a few minutes he feels her hand perched on his shoulder, tentative, like a bird about to take flight. His eyes close against the feeling, her hands and what they're capable of pulling apart grabbed him by surprise tonight. Just as she's about to pull away he reaches for it and grabs it, using that leverage to pull her close to him. He can feel her body then, the warmth of her all along his back, and how she rests her forehead against his back. She whispers something that sounds an awful lot like an_ "I'm sorry"_ against his shoulders, her warm breath giving her away.

"Sleep." He says again, tenderly this time, his thumb rubbing small circles in her hand, even as he knows she'd do it again in a heartbeat; that the action isn't what her apology is for, but he accepts that. He holds their intertwined fingers to his chest, on top of his heart. No matter what, it beats for her. Regardless of what she might have done or could ever do, the one thing he can never stop doing is loving her.


End file.
